


step out of the shade

by hellynz



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, I never write stuff this sappy but here we are, Love Confessions, Pining, thasmin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 19:20:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18901009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellynz/pseuds/hellynz
Summary: The Doctor contemplates her past after accidentally admitting something.





	step out of the shade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jolivira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jolivira/gifts).



> Please listen to either "I Choose You" by Sara Barreilles or "Love Like You" by Rebecca Sugar while you read this because this is hugely influenced by both of them. The title is from "Romeo and Juliet" by The Killers. Lots of musical influence in this one!
> 
> Do you love the 13th Doctor? Then you will LOVE her fanzine!!! Find out more at thirteenfanzine.tumblr.com
> 
> This is for Joli because she is my honorary little sister and I love her.

“Yaz, you are absolutely amazing, no wonder I’m in love with you.”

The Doctor knew, as a time lord, that time couldn’t actually freeze. Or it wasn’t supposed to. Happened very rarely. But the figure of speech was aptly named, she mused as the entire world seemed to screech to a halt around her.

_Had she actually said that out loud?_

A quick glance over and- yep, she definitely had.

Yaz was blushing and her mouth was falling open in the beginning of a protest, her hands clasped in front of her and fidgeting.

_Hmm. How to handle this._

“Love all of my fam!” she said quickly, and as time restarted she realized her own face was growing warm as well. “Been around this lot since I turned into myself, don’t know who I am without you guys, Yaz the copper, Yaz my favorite, love Yaz, wait I mean-”

She turned back towards the display in front of her and began rerouting the misdirected cargo ships one by one, moving quickly even though she really wanted to smack herself in the face.

“Is it weird that I said that? I don’t think it’s that weird. Just a little weird. Y’know, you humans are-” she began, whirling again towards her friend, but she was thankfully cut off by the door slamming open and Ryan and Graham bursting in.

“Finally, we’ve been searching for ages, there’s a fleet of-”

“No worries, Ryan, Yaz has already come up with a brilliant plan,” the Doctor said, grinning wildly and rounding on him as a welcome distraction. He raised an eyebrow at her but smiled over at Yaz. “Figured out that, since they’re entirely automated, they have a built in failsafe to keep them from colliding with each other. All I had to do was redirect them to crash into their own ships, and the failsafe kicked in and they stopped. Should buy us enough time to get this place out of the way. Told ya she was brilliant!” she finished, waving her sonic in Yaz’s direction.

Yaz was still blushing and wouldn’t quite look at her. The Doctor’s smile faltered and she cleared her throat, turning back to the monitor. “Right. Anyways-”

“We still gotta get outta here, don’t we?” Graham said, glancing between the three of them and the door.

“Right you are, Graham. C’mon gang.”

They were on a small satellite planet that was unfortunate enough to be accidentally trespassing into the territory of an illegal goods exchange network. A few quick words with the leaders, some strict instructions to keep a better eye on their navigational paths, and they were gone.

This, unfortunately, left the Doctor with nothing to occupy her thoughts.

She frowned at the dark and silent distress alert signal, willing it to go off. Let there be someone who needed help, so that she could get her brain out of the gutter and back into the action of the universe. But nothing came through. And so her mind drifted, as it tended to these days, to Yaz.

The way she smiled, so brilliant it left the Doctor dazed. And her calloused hands, running through the Doctor’s hair to pull a leaf out of it or reaching to untwist one of her suspenders. The feeling of them, warm and rough in the Doctor’s hand. Her eyes, following the Doctor around, so open and shining and wonderful and ready to do whatever it took. She smiled just thinking about her laugh, and how desperate she was to make it appear whenever she could, making stupid jokes and acting even sillier than usual just hoping that Yaz would look at her with fondness and amusement in her incredible eyes-

She pushed back at the warmth bubbling in her chest, shoved it down. This was not happening. Yaz didn’t love her back, anyway. Probably never would, she was just some crazy old alien lady whisking herself in and out of their lives. Yaz needed someone stable and sane, someone who would protect her and love her the way she deserved to be loved. She distinctly ignored the treacherous part of her brain that spoke up about how no one could protect Yaz like she could, no one could love her like-

She tapped at the still unlit distress alert a few times. Then, just to be sure it was working properly, yanked open a panel to take a look, crouching down and glaring into the darkness.

“Love,” she murmured, scrunching up her nose at her own reflection in the console as she reached in deeper to yank at a couple of wires. “I don’t do love.”

“Could’ve fooled me,” came Graham’s voice from behind her, and she yelped, sparks stinging her fingertips as her hand slipped and grazed a stabilizing battery. She turned to glare at him, standing in the doorway and smirking at her.

“Hey! Don’t sneak up on me like that. And in my own ship, disrespectful,” she said, a quick glance at her fingers showing no harm done as she leapt to her feet. “What can I do for you, Graham?”

He trotted down the stairs. “I needed to talk to you about something. Ryan wanted to be here, but I thought you’d take it better from me.”

She tilted her head to the side, frowning, a pit of anxiety opening in the bottom of her stomach. “What’s wrong? Are you okay, do you want- want to go home or something?” Please say no.

“No, no, it’s not that.” She let out a breath and started to smile. “It’s just that Ryan and I overheard you and Yaz earlier, on that planet ship thing. We heard you say you’re in love with her.”

Her face was the color of the grass on Gallifrey before the end of his sentence. “Oh. That. Yeah, that- it was, um. I-” The anxiety was a storm within her now.

“Didn’t surprise either of us, to be honest, you’re both very obviously in love with each other. You’ve been giving puppy dog eyes behind each others backs for months now. She’s been head over heels for you since the moment you met, can barely stand to be away from you, and you’ll do anything she asks and blame me or Ryan for it if it goes wrong.”

But the Doctor had barely heard any of what he said, her eyes blown wide with shock. “You think she loves me back?”

They both stood in a stunned silence for a few seconds before she realized what she’d said and took a step backwards, fumbling and stuttering. “I mean, you think- we look at each other like…”

“Yes. She’s just as in love with you as you are with her,” he answered, cutting her off. “And you need to decide what to do about it.”

She huffed a breath out, moving around the engine room and glancing over at him reluctantly.

“Don’t give me that look. I don’t fall in love with humans anymore. I don’t do it. Not actually fall in love. Not with humans.”

She could see out of the corner of her eye that he was nodding and she let her shoulders begin to relax.

“Why not?”

Turning, she gaped at him. Her mouth closed and reopened a few times as she tried to answer.

Finally, she blurted out “Isn’t it obvious?”

“Well, clearly not, love, because I have no clue what you’re going on about.”

“It’s, I can’t, I-” she stopped, huffing out a frustrated breath and going still for once. She knew Graham could see through her rambling, anyway. Humans lived short lives, but he had more life experience than most of the people she brought aboard. Made him harder to fool when she needed to. The console behind her let out a chime and she turned to it, fiddling with the controls and frowning at monitors as if she didn’t know it was just the ship updating her on their travel status.

“Have I ever told you how old I am Graham?” She heard him shift, and when she turned back she saw he had shrugged, placing his hands in his pockets.

“No, you haven’t come right out and said it, but I’m guessing it’s hundreds of years past what I’ll ever reach.”

“Try thousands,” she said, the smile spreading across her face sad and lopsided. “Could even make an argument for billions, but I try not to think about that.”

“Well, not gonna try to unpack that right now,” he said, eyebrows raised.

She snorted. “I don’t blame you.”

“But in all that time, you’ve never let yourself love anyone?”

She laughed, surprised. “No, of course not. I’ve loved many times and many people, but I’ve only… allowed myself to get that emotionally attached to someone twice, at least in recent memory.” At another chime, she loped around the console, turned a couple of knobs to keep them steady in their position for a few hours. “And I love all of my friends of course, but romantically feels different. Humans live such incredibly short lives, and being around me for a long time doesn’t exactly increase their chances. I can’t- I don’t handle it well. When it ends. It’s like the blink of an eye for me. It hurts.”

She sighed, heavy and tired. “There was a woman named Rose, once. She traveled with me for a long time and was gonna travel with me forever. She saved me from myself when we met, and she loved me so much, and I- But, y’know, things happen, and now she’s in an alternate dimension and I’ll never see her again.”

“The usual love story,” Graham said, the joke falling weakly between them.

The Doctor chuckled once, her voice too deep. “Yeah, it was complicated. And it was hundreds of years ago and I still think of her every day. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely over her. I’ll miss her for the rest of my life.”

The silence that met her brought heat to her face and she leaned to poke a toe at her custard cream dispenser, desperate for something to do. She’d been very closed off about herself so far in this face. Remembering how to open up was… difficult. Not something she’d been planing on doing today.

As she leaned to grab the biscuit, he stepped forward and snatched it from her hand, taking a bite and ignoring her shout of protest

“I knew Grace for three years out of my entire life. I would very much rather have just those three years than never have had any at all,” he said through a mouthful of biscuit. “Would you give up your time with Rose if it meant you didn’t have to suffer through missing her?”

“No. Course not,” she said, slumping back against the console. “But-”

She thought of the beach. Thought of the couple extra seconds she’d needed.

_Rose Tyler, I…_

Bringing a hand to her face with a sigh, she pinched the bridge of her nose. “No, I would never give her up. I get what you’re saying. It’s just-”

“Not that simple, I know. But you should think about it. Why live so long of a life if you’re going to stay lonely?”

She shrugged. Looked away when he tried to meet her gaze, stubborn. There was a long pause between them.

“I’ll leave you to think about it then. But just so you know Yaz is in the kitchen. Said something about making a cake.” She couldn’t help perking up at the idea of sweets, and he chuckled, patted her on the shoulder and headed towards the door. “You have a choice to make, Doc. Is she worth the pain that could come after?”

\--

“How have you been hiding so many talents from me?” the Doctor asked, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen.

Yaz jumped and turned quickly, a round cake tin in each hand. “Oh! Hi Doctor, I uhm- I didn’t hear you walk in.”

“Sorry,” she said, stepping into the room and leaning on the table. “What can’t you do though, seriously? Police office, clever, kind, and you can bake?”

“It’s not gonna be anything special, my mum just always hated boxed cakes so I have a couple easy recipes up my sleeve,” she protested, laying her oven mitts down next to the stove and rolling her sleeves up, turning back to a bowl filled with confectioners sugar and stirring in milk, lifting the spoon to taste.

“Needs more vanilla,” she said thoughtfully, turning towards the cupboards.

“Yaz, can I talk to you about earlier?”

She paused, her hand on the vanilla. The Doctor watched the tips of her ears darken with a flush. “Um…”

“What I said on the ship, I mean. Is what I wanna talk about,” she prattled on, nervous. “I mean, if you remember what I said. Maybe you don’t. I thought it was a big deal, it shouldn’t have been, isn’t, but-”

“It’s okay, Doctor, I get it,” Yaz said, voice soft. She turned back finally and met her eyes. “Slip of the tongue, right? We all say things we don’t mean sometimes, it’s fine.”

“Slip of the…” the Doctor trailed off, confused.

“You said you were in love with me,” Yaz said, with a sad chuckle. “Why would you ever be in love with me? I’m just me, and you’re-”

“Yasmin Khan, stop right there,” she interrupted, stepping quickly around the table so that they were face to face, nothing in between them. “You are not just anything. You are absolutely amazing. I don’t deserve you at all, and you deserve much better than me.”

Yaz was looking up at her, eyes shining like they always did, fear and worry and hope.

Hesitating, she reached down and took one of her hands. “And I did mean it. It wasn’t a mistake. I- I am in love. With you. I think. It’s just hard for me to admit these things, and I thought you probably didn’t love me back, so I- I don’t know.”

Yaz’s mouth had fallen open. And the Doctor just couldn’t resist anymore.

She lifted her other hand to cup Yaz’s cheek, rubbing her thumb in soft back and forth motions, and leaned forward, catching her bottom lip between her own. There was a moment of terrible stillness, and the Doctor almost started to pull away, horrified, when Yaz suddenly threw both arms around the Doctor’s neck and pressed their bodies together, kissing back with enthusiasm. She tasted like toothpaste and frosting, her skin was soft and her hair smelled of strawberries, and the Doctor felt dizzy even though she knew she had plenty of time left before she had to take a breath.

“Yaz, wait,” she said, gasping, when they finally did break apart, “I have to- I want you to know-”

“Don’t you dare try to talk me out of it,” Yaz murmured, one hand sliding into the Doctor’s hair and pressing them back together. The Doctor laughed into her mouth.

“No, that’s not it, I just wanted to say something a little… mushy.”

Yaz tilted her head to the side, a gentle smile appearing on her face. “Mushier than an accidental declaration of love?”

The Doctor chuckled and shifted her feet, embarrassed. “Yes, actually.”

She smiled bigger. “Well go on then.”

The Doctor felt her face heating up again and pressed her lips together, eyes darting around the room. “I’m bad at this. At talking about my feelings. Just so you know.”

Yaz nodded, still holding her close.

She took a deep breath. “I’ve been through a lot in my life. I’ve loved before, and it’s always ended painfully for me. But I just wanted to say to you that you are worth it. You’re worth the pain, if it comes. I’d rather spend a single day with you and miss you for a thousand years than never be with you at all.”

Glancing back at Yaz’s face, shining and open and beautiful, she winced. “Was that too much? I’m sorry, I don’t want to be overwhelming, I just-”

Yaz shook her head slowly, and then rested her forehead on the Doctor’s shoulder with a huge, shuddering sigh. “Not too much. I just can’t believe you feel the same way I do.”

The Doctor froze and then was grinning, stepping back so she could look Yaz in the eye. “So we’re on the same page then?”

Yaz shoved at her shoulder gently, laughing. “Course we are, you daft old thing.”

"Okay," the Doctor laughed, and she was telling the truth for once. It was okay that they were on the same page. It was okay that she and Yaz loved each other so desperately.

She moved to plant a kiss on the crown of Yaz's head. And she didn't think about the future, she didn't think about the pain that could come in some years. She thought about the now.

And it was worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> It's short, but it's fun! I will still be updating my 13/Martha fic and have much longer things coming up, so stay tuned.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr:
> 
> hellynz.tumblr.com
> 
> thirteenfanzine.tumblr.com


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